The Moon and Saturn will make a close approach, passing within 5°03' of each other. The Moon will be 26 days old.
From Cambridge however, the pair will not be observable – they will reach their highest point in the sky during daytime and will be no higher than 8° above the horizon at dawn.
The Moon will be at mag -10.5 in Pisces; and Saturn will be at mag 0.7 in Cetus.
They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope or pair of binoculars, but will be visible to the naked eye.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Saturn around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 00h31m20s | 6°29'N | Pisces | -10.5 | 32'13"5 |
| Saturn | 00h40m40s | 1°59'N | Cetus | 0.7 | 16"2 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 42° from the Sun, which is in Aries at this time of year.
The sky on 13 May 2026
| The sky on 13 May 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
9% 26 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Related news
| 27 Nov 2025 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 26 Jul 2026 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 04 Oct 2026 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 10 Dec 2026 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.